Ok, this is going to be a short and a boring one, sorry. I didn't take any pictures either. But Mörkö took some video he put to his Instagram, so let's see if you can find something from there!
Monday, the second of March, a.k.a "the third day of merciless pounding" started without me at 10:00 as I needed unfortunately to work until noon. However, I already got a message just an hour later that the first song was already done and the second one in the schedule was waiting for my final decision about the final tempo. We had agreed about speeding it up from the demo version's 170 BPM "a bit" due to us feeling it was dragging a bit, but never actually set the final number in stone. Until now.
Mörkö: "song #2 now that 175bpm?"Me: "oh shit uhhhhmmm....goddamnit"
Me: "hmmm, well, go with 175 and let's freak out when we listen to it"
Mörkö: "sure"
Me: "so anyway let's do it like that"
Me: "but listen to yourself after recording it how does it sound like"
Me: "is virta of vreth there? if yes tell them to listen and confirm how that 175 feels to them as well"
Mörkö: "nope"
Me: "oh...goddamn"
Me: "well, record it on 175 and listen it through after the take"
Mörkö: "nah, it's ok 😅 "
Me"i'm a bit anxious about this 😀 but go with 175 and let's hope it's good"
Guess what? It wasn't. When I arrived to the studio a couple of hours later and listened to the take, I wanted to offer Mörkö a pile of money, cocaine, and my rarest black metal t-shirt because of what I was going to have to tell him...and I didn't even have that black metal shirt. :( Needless to say, he wasn't exactly very pleased to hear that he needs to re-record it... and judging from his expressions it was very clear that it doesn't at least happen today. Can't really blame him.
I've recorded quite a bunch of songs in my lifetime and swear I've never, ever, encountered a situation where a puny 5 BPM (2.9% in this case) increase on tempo tears the song completely broken. The most important melodies and rhythms just became a trainwreck of a mess which just "happened".... and thentheywerealreadygone. I spent an hour after the studio tweaking the tempo and listening for different variations, and for my even bigger surprise, a 2 (YES, ACTUALLY AND LITERALLY TWO) BPM speeding was already on the verge of sounding too fast. I confirmed this with two other people who knew the song by now and both told me the same. Now, one might ask why didn't I do this beforehand? Or, why didn't anyone think about recording some other song before I can come to the studio to check it out? And why did I bring helium instead or air?
Anyway, despite of probably wanting to punch me into my face, Mörkö punched his drums instead with furious rage and performed the rest of the album's drums in during the afternoon. After the day I went home to realize it was full of my daughter's friends who had eaten most of our dinner and started longing for the more calm and quieter studio environment again.
As nobody is really keen on literally losing money because having to take days off from work, and Mörkö having only one full song left, the next day (that being tuesday the third) we agreed to work first and start the studio in the afternoon. He banged that one missing song in 171 BPM which was exactly what it needed and we went carefully through everything we had recorded thus far. I made some last-minute requests to some parts which he performed again and we declared the drums finished for good.
While everyone else went home, I drove to my parents' house instead to pick up a huge Ikea-bag full of washed clothes (see the end of the previous post for clarification why the fuck a grown man asks his mom to do his laundry) and listened to NOFX on full volume at car. Because I was tired, and because NOFX.
There will be a break from the studio until next week's thursday (that being March 12th) when Skrymer starts to play his guitars. I will be spending the following days playing all the spare guitars myself at my home on top of Mörkö's drums in order to make sure we have extra takes for all the songs in case anything happens. Not that I'm paranoid or anything, but let's just say that I have not forgotten what happened the last time.
Stay tuned for the next episode in the grand adventures of Finns and Trolls!
Ah ah, Hot Shot 2 !
ReplyDeleteFrom the Tempo variations, I remember a video with Ligeti and his favorit pianist interpret Pierre Laurent Aimard working on the Studen (from Ligeti)
And they try different tempis.
After experimentations, Ligeti says "It's strange, for each studen, there is only one tempo which is true. All the others are too slow or too fast. I don't know why. I don't know from which paramaters it depends.
You're conclusion seems to be the same.
The magic mysteries of music... :)
Good luck for the following :)
Yann
One of Svartby's earlier songs has exactly 187 bpm tempo, and not a digit back or forth! :D And it was exactly the same reason. 185 seemed dragging the whole thing backwards, and 190 was a total mess.
ReplyDelete